Eleven (38 page)

“Caught? For what?”

Jack spread out photographs found in Bingham’s cell on the table and added one of Anna Knowles. It was included to elicit an emotional reaction from Reggie, and it seemed to work. “Do you know Lance Bingham?”

Reggie’s eyes moistened as he picked up the photograph of his mother.  “I never even got to know her. I only saw pictures and heard stories.”

“Lance Bingham?”

Reggie didn’t answer Jack but spewed words of no consequence. “I was with my father a lot at this Bible camp for kids. It’s one of the rules for living under his roof. How pathetic am I? I’m forty and living with dad.”

“Bingham?”

“I’ve never had a religious bone in me. I don’t understand what dad gets from it. I guess that’s why we’re all made differently.”

“Answer my question about Bingham.”

Reggie’s eyes finally rose from the picture of his mother. “I don’t know who that is.”

“Not even from Twitter? Maybe the name The Redeemer sticks with you more?”

“The Redeemer? And Twitter? You have to own a computer.”

“Or at least have access to one.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“See, I think you do.”

After a few hours of interrogation, Jack took the photo of Anna Knowles from Reggie’s hand.

“No, please.”

Jack stuffed it into a folder with the rest of the pictures and left the room. The door slammed hard behind him. “It’s not our guy.” Jack patted his shirt pocket.

“How do you know for sure?”

“He doesn’t know Bingham.”

“Because he said so.” The words left my lips, and I felt like an idiot for allowing them to give birth.

“We have to prove he does. And we can’t. He was a baby when his mom died, a delinquent kid afterward. Why would he pay attention to some friend of his father? We’ll verify his alibi for Tuesday and pull up all the information we can get on him. We don’t even have enough for a warrant to search the residence for a computer. And until we can connect him to Bingham and Salt Lick,” Jack paused. This was the first time I noticed the case having any sort of real impact on Jack. “We’ll hold him overnight. Maybe he’ll have more to say by morning. Let’s call it a night.” Jack pulled out a cigarette from the package.

CHAPTER 37

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, and when most groupings would be eating dessert and coffee, we were sipping on a drink and talking about what we were going to do after. But hours passed, and we still hadn’t gone anywhere. We just continued drinking and talking.

“You going to have another?” Paige asked me as she sipped on a glass of merlot.

“I’m fine.” Everything from this case weighed on my mind along with my marriage to Deb and the active attraction to Paige. I never should have kissed her last night, and I had no right to feel jealous when another man showed interest in her.

“The kid probably has a bedtime to adhere to.” Jack laughed and sipped back on his olive martini.

Zachery laughed. “What is it ten thirty?”

“Try closer to midnight.” I endured a few more minutes before excusing myself and heading back to my room. I needed to be alone.

I dropped on the bed with my arms crossed under my head and stared at the ceiling. I needed to call Deb. I dialed the new cell number. It had rang once before a message came on,
the number you are trying to reach is no longer in service
. My breath shortened.

How could she have done this to me?

And as my thoughts progressed, they transformed from heartache to anger, to worry. I dialed the number again and met the same result. Maybe I had recorded the number incorrectly? I scrolled through the calls to my phone until I came to the one she made yesterday and I dropped my hand. She had called me from head office.

It hurt to breathe as if my heart had become splinters of metal, and with each inhale and exhale they stabbed further into the tissue.

I had to convince myself she was safe. I just hated what the flipside to that meant—she had disconnected her phone.

I took a deep breath, the exhale working its way out slowly, painfully.
Deb was all right. I wasn’t.

I undressed and pulled my MP3 player from my luggage bag and popped in the earbuds. Nothing like a workout would cure this. I needed the volume loud and the physical intensity draining. I started with jumping jacks as nothing got the heart beating faster. After a minute of these, I moved onto jabs, upper cuts, and then side and roundhouse kicks.

As I was nearing the end of the workout, I heard a pounding on the door even over
Nickelback’s Burn it to the Ground.
I pulled one bud from an ear. My breathing was still labored when I opened the door. “Paige?”

She stepped into the room and put a hand on my chest. She didn’t seem to care I was soaking wet. “I need you to listen to me.” She looked down at my boxing shorts. “Why are you always in your underwear?”

I went to move to the bathroom for a towel. She grabbed my arm. “I didn’t come here to talk.”

“You just said you needed me to lis—”

Her lips pressed against mine, and as her mouth opened and mine reciprocated, I knew I didn’t possess the strength to back away this time. Deb’s face went through my thoughts but dissipated as fog does once the sun breaks through the clouds. I pulled Paige to me and cupped her breast in my hand. She moaned under my touch, and I under hers. I led her to my bed and made love to her. My thoughts weren’t on Deb, on my failed marriage, or on Jack and how he might feel. They were simply in the moment, living and breathing in Paige. It had been too long.

Afterward
we held each other and spoke of everything except for promises and expectations. I told her about Deb, and she ran a hand down my chest and listened. We ended up falling asleep because when my eyes opened a couple hours had gone by. The alarm clock read two forty-five. I nudged her. She groaned.

I rose from the bed, put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

“Where are you going?” Her voice was groggy, yet laden with more sexual appetite.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Of course I worry about—” Her last word faded from exhaustion, and she sat up. “It’s late.”

“We fell asleep.”

“Where are you going?”

For some reason when I looked at her now, I saw her differently. I cared about her, dare even say loved her, but she was involved with my boss. Now that we could possibly be together, life still kept us apart. I realized the irony of it and appreciated life a little less.

“You should get back to your room. Jack.”

She lifted the sheets to cover herself. “Jack?”

“We can’t have him finding out about—,” I rolled my hand “—this.”

“This?”

I was saying everything wrong. “I mean—”

“You think I’m sleeping with him?” Paige’s mouth tilted upward to a smile. She shook her head, amused at something. “I kind of led you to believe that.”

I dropped on the end of the bed. “You mean you’re not.”

“Heavens no.”

“You were in his hotel room back in Salt Lick.”

“You knew?”

“Why were you there?”

She pulled her legs in and tucked her head to her knees.

“Fine you don’t want to tell me.”

“I was just talking to him.”

“Just talking?” Anger raised the hair on the back of my neck.

“Yes, just talking.”

“Why haven’t you denied my accusations? Why make me believe—”

“I guess I just wanted to make you—”

“Jealous?”

She pressed her lips and nodded.

I got off the bed. She followed.

“Brandon?” Her hand touched my arm. I turned and looked at her. I pulled her to me and caressed her forehead. I kissed her there, and then her lips. She tried to pull me back to bed, but my mind was interfering.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Sorry for what?” She was angry now and worked at gathering her clothes.

“I just have to think.”

“Now you have to think?” She stopped outside the bathroom door.

“Please don’t take this personally.”

“How can I not take this personally?” She slammed the bathroom door behind her.

The lounge of the hotel was like many others with dim lighting and candlelit tables. Bottles of alcohol were showcased on glass shelves behind the bar and bathed in seductive illumination, making what should be enjoyed in moderation a call to those desperate in heart.
Right now, I was one of them.

I sat at the bar and ordered a double Manhattan. Less than a minute later, the bartender sat the drink in front of me. The glass looked like crystal, yet I suspected it to be a cheap knockoff. I found irony in the thought of false appearances. Before all this, before Salt Lick, I thought Deb and I were okay. Now I realized I had deceived myself.

I drained back on the drink and enjoyed the potent flavor of the alcohol as it filled my mouth. I listened to the music of a piano assuming it was simply a recording until I spotted a man playing, tucked around the corner. I hadn’t even noticed at first how big the lounge was. I got up, taking my drink with me. I had heard the breaking of billiard balls before I saw the tables.

A few black oak pool tables lined with red felt were there. A stained glass light feature consisting of three pyramid-shaped shades hung from a black iron bracket and illuminated the tables.

The man on the piano played
The Way You Look Tonight
.

Playing pool at the one table was a familiar face. As I walked toward Jack, I extended a hand.

He looked at my hand as if it were a foreign concept to shake hands as a greeting. He rubbed a piece of chalk on the end of a pool cue. “You play, Kid?”

I retracted my hand. “I have a couple times.”

“Twenty a game too steep for ya?”

I shook my head. “I should be able to handle it.”

“You wouldn’t make a good poker player. You some sort of pool savant?” Jack set up the rack.

I had been made. The truth was I had spent most of my teenage years at a billiard hall not far from here. I smiled at him, but it faded when I noticed the drink on the side table. It was another olive martini with three olives on a plastic skewer.

Had he been drinking since we left the restaurant hours ago?

“Your break.”

“All right then.” I took a sip of the Manhattan before setting it on the table beside the martini. “I’m not taking it easy on you just ’cause you’re the boss either.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

I pulled a pool cue off the rack, and as I chalked the end all the conflict from the last week, from the last several months, paraded through my mind. I attributed the reflective nature on the alcohol and the soft background music.

I bent over and lined up the shot. Three balls went into pockets, two stripes and one solid.

“Pretty impressive, Kid.”

It took three shots for me to miss and for it to become Jack’s turn. He lined up and took a few shots in a row himself. When he missed, he straightened out and headed for his martini. He took a draw on it until there wasn’t much left in the glass.

“It’s been kind of a rough week.”

Jack wasn’t facing me when I said this. The glass he had sat down, he lifted again. When the glass went back to the table, it was empty save the olives. “If it’s too much for you, you can leave anytime.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”